Instagram might let users ‘mute’ specific words in DMs: Here's how it works

While users can always block and delete hateful content from their messages and home feed, this can become a tedious process, something that the company appears to be working on – in the form of keyword-based muting in your direct messages.

Here's what a message containing a muted word might look like. (Alessandro Paluzzi/Twitter)

Social networking apps like Instagram are great to keep in touch with friends and family especially during trying times like the novel coronavirus pandemic, but the platform is also home to a lot of toxic behaviour from users who do not abide by the company's community guidelines. While users can always block and delete hateful content from their messages and home feed, this can become a tedious process, something that the company appears to be working on – in the form of keyword-based muting in your direct messages.

Back in March, we reported that Instagram was working on its new “Content controls” section under the ‘Interactions' settings section. The app already allows users to control comments their receive on their posts, with options to hide offensive comments on posts, stories, reels and live videos, along with a manual filter for custom keywords and the option to block the most commonly reported words as well.

pic.twitter.com/Wuf29ebpY7

— Alessandro Paluzzi (@alex193a) April 13, 2021

Now, noted leaker Alessandro Paluzzi has tweeted screenshots that indicate Facebook will also extend the same filtering ability for ‘muted' keywords to users in their Direct Messages as well. The first screenshot indicates that Instagram will likely group all filtered messages in a grouped section called ‘Filtered messages' under the Message Requests section, which looks rather useful.

Meanwhile, another screenshot shared by Paluzzi indicates that users who open a message that has been filtered due to a muted word will not see the message itself. Instead, they might see a bubble that says “Message hidded (sic) based on your content control preferences” with smaller text underneath that tells users to tap and hold the message to view its contents. While Paluzzi was able to get the feature working (likely by reverse-engineering the app), it is unclear when the feature will eventually roll out to all users on the platform.